


they're gonna be out looking for us all night

by HelicopterDarlings



Category: Huntik: Secrets & Seekers
Genre: Gen, evil henchmen looking out for each other, friendship dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2018-09-28 07:24:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10079375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelicopterDarlings/pseuds/HelicopterDarlings
Summary: Because when you recruit a bunch of young adults and kids and tell them that they’re going to rule the world, you have to be upfront about everything that this entails- including but not limited to: the matching uniforms, cross-country hiking trips, and taking orders from a bratty half-pint.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Blood Spiral antics! Because evil henchmen are people too! Written in response to an anon message on Tumblr about Spiral accommodations during their hiking trip but spiraled (ha) into a fic about friendship dynamics. (Title comes from Search Party by Sam Bruno)

_they're gonna be out looking for us all night_

Because when you recruit a bunch of young adults and kids and tell them that they're going to rule the world, you have to be upfront about everything that this entails- including but not limited to: the matching uniforms, cross-country hiking trips, and taking orders from a bratty half-pint.

* * *

Camp is slow waking up. Large crowds of people tend to do that, a massive division wanting to start the day right and the other wanting to shut down the bright ball of hate that is the sun. Doing an action, as a synchronized group, takes time less like dominoes falling and more like molasses dripping.

Nevertheless, camp wakes up, and people go on about training and daily walking regimen before breakfast, coming back to camp just as daylight starts to shine. Over the slight din of spirals tiredly making their way to breakfast, a distinct whining pierces through the air.

"What do you mean I'm not going?" A frowning boy blows the dark fringe of hair from his eyes.

"It means that you're staying here and training with me while Zhalia runs out for errands." A stocky man in front of him says, voice void of inflection. His foot is tapping impatiently, unprepared to deal with the kid at eight in the morning without any caffeine or food in his system.

A Spiral turns on her heel upon seeing her supposed superiors' argument, and sits underneath a nearby tree's shade to recover from the morning exercises. Huffing, she curls up in a fetal position- one hand 'round her knees.

"I'm supposed to be with her _at all times_."

"No, she's supposed to be _guarding_ you at all times," says the stocky man, lowering his voice as another Spiral passes. He didn't take notice of the fight, however, too engaged in writing in a journal. "Due to her being occupied today, I'm doing it instead. A simple recon is beneath someone of your power and station, Harrison."

"You're sending _Zhalia_ ," Harrison insists. "It's not going to be a _simple_ recon. I'm supposed to train with her today."

"You can train with her tomorrow. Or are you and her hiding something from me, boy?"

"I won't hide anything from you, Tantras," assures Harrison.

Behind Tantras, a brown-haired new recruit frantically searches his pockets, having probably misplaced another amulet. He hasn't even put up his hood.

 _Amateurs_ , Harrison thinks even as he says, "It's just that there's this mind spell she's been teaching me and I think I fucked up the technique-"

Wisely, he stops as Tantras' eyes squint- the same look he has whenever a mosquito _dares_ to bite him, seconds before spraying the poor fucker to death.

"Mind spells," Tantras spits out, "are a waste of time. Chaos already exists in the minds of men- you must focus more on bringing out the chaos in the _physical_ world."

Harrison suppresses an involuntary shudder as a Harlekin passes by him, handing a pen to the brown-haired guy who snatches it from the Harlekin's grasp. The stupid clowns always freak him out, but he can't show that weakness in front of Tantras. "I didn't mean-"

"You didn't mean to waste your time on such useless spells?"

Feeling the other Spirals' curious gazes behind his back, Harrison shuts up. Mentally counting to ten like Zhalia had instructed him to, he clenches his hands and takes a deep breath. "Planting seeds of doubt and misunderstanding in the minds of men would be a step towards inciting chaos in the world."

Tantras pauses, then rubs his white beard. "That's a mighty fair point," he concedes. "Still, you should not slack off in training with your Titans. The Red Comet is almost here, and by then you must prove yourself to be a worthy servant of Chaos." He then makes a wild gesture, full of maniacal energy that shouldn't be accessible before eight in the morning.

"Bingo!"

Tantras and Harrison turn to the Spiral who was writing in his journal, now suddenly waving to the brown-haired recruit.

The brown-haired guy looks to Tantras and Harrison, behind him to the other Spiral breathing heavily in the shade. Looks back, points to himself. The other one closes his journal and frantically nods.

"Bingo, my dude, my guy! What's up? I can't believe you're here! How are you? How's life working out for you, Bingo?" He runs to him and wraps an arm around his shoulders, angle awkward due to brown-haired guy being a head taller.

A wheezing sound comes from the Spiral in the shade.

Harrison turns back his attention to Tantras and begrudgingly nods. "Fine, I'll train with you."

Tantras looks pleased. "Later, when the sun is higher up in the sky. You've become a bit pale," he says over his shoulder, walking away to get some breakfast before terrorizing the new recruits again.

"Of course," Harrison mutters. "She gets a mission and I get baked under the sun. _Fantastic._ " He jogs off to the breakfast tent, preparing to stock up before the training.

The two Spirals watch him go, before the brown-haired guy one removes the smaller one's hand slung around his shoulders. "Dude, what the fuck," he hisses, "You almost blew it!"

"Sorry, I panicked!" replies the smaller Spiral in a pitchy voice. "What else was I supposed to do?"

"Oh gee, I don't know, call bingo _after_ they'd left?"

"But this is the first time I've won this thing! I always get the shittiest cards, I swear to God." The smaller Spiral shakes out a small sheet of paper from his journal. "This is, like, the first card I got that didn't have _SOMEBODY MAKES A HARLEKIN JUMPSCARE_ as a free space."

"Yeah, I got one of those, actually." They turn around to see the girl who sat in the shade, running up to them. "Congratulations, by the way. Can I see that?"

"Sure." He hands over the card to the girl and recalls Harlekin back to his amulet. The brown-haired recruit stares at the card from over the girl's shoulder.

"Holy shit, you weren't kidding." The card is a limited-edition one, centralized to the leaders. All the squares under the letter N are scratched out, from _SHAUNA GOES BERSERK BEFORE LUNCH_ to _TANTRAS MAKES A SPEECH ABOUT CHAOS_ – even the free space _HARRISON USES ZHALIA'S WORDS_. "Were you trailing them the entire morning?"

"I had to," he hisses, insisting. The smaller Spiral is still as a statue, shuddering only to remember the things he had went through, the _things_ he forced himself to _see_ , only to ensure that he won today's round of Bingo and the prize of extra rations at the table. "I had to."

The girl stares at him in both pity and awe. "Did you really walk in on Kiel when h-"

" _I don't want to talk about it."_

The brown-haired guy claps the catatonic man on his shoulder, steering him to the direction of the breakfast tent. "Congratulations, kiddo. Come on, let's eat. You've seen enough horrors for today."

"Look at it this way," says the girl conversationally, falling into step next to them. "At least you didn't walk in on Rassimov's UST-filled counseling session with our zombie leader."

Without knowing why, Spirals all around camp shivered in fear and disgust.

* * *

 


	2. Chapter 2

“You read these kinds of books?” Janine asked Zhalia, checking the cover again to make sure she hasn’t misread the title.

“I’ve never liked fairytales. And the science books all have gross pictures in them. At least these are interesting.”

Interesting _is one way to put it,_ Janine thought. _The book’s twice as large as her face_. The kid kept glancing at the book, and drawing pineapples on her notes, with an unnerving laser focus. Janine isn’t even sure what that has to do with anything she was reading.

Captain Matthew had told her to expect anything weird, said that the child was unusually special, but… really? This was just too much.   _Algebraic Geometry_ by Robin Hartshorne. The kid was eight _fucking_ years old. She’s supposed to be out there playing with kids her age, or at least her Titan. Her _lizard_ Titan.

She had a long-held superstition that the first Titan a child bonded with said a lot about what they will grow up into. Warrior type Titans bonded to children who will spend their lives protecting people. Flying Titans meant that the children will stand out amongst others due to their skills, pride, or both. Janine herself had been bonded to her Enforcer since she was nine, stingy kid as she was, and had felt a kind of peace after joining the Organization.

And reptilian Titans, she found, tended to bond with equally-as-cold-blooded kids.

(Her sister would have disagreed, would have said that Janine can’t generalize stuff as personal as someone’s bond with their Titan. But Glenda’s Bulreguard had stood by her side, had died by her side as she herded her precious Foundation’s junior researchers into safety and the both of them got rained down by bullets. Her sister wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, even if she were alive.)

“I like books too.” The sudden timbre of the voice behind them made Janine grab for the amulet at her waist, feet set apart in a fight stance, only to drop it as she recognized the owner of the voice.

The speaker still hid in the shadows. “Oh no, please, don’t hit me with your amulet, I’m too young to die,” said the mocking voice.

Janine slowly took a deep breath, tried to calm the furious thoughts in her mind. “You wouldn’t even read the label on a ketchup bottle and you like to read books?” she growled.

She glared at the shadows in general, unable to make out the outline of her new partner, some fresh recruit from some failed unit in Silmido. Jorene, his name in the report. _Another black ops reject._  “Did you even secure the perimeter like I told you to?”

Jorene waved, his pale hand hitting a sliver of light, the only visible thing peeking out from the shelves. “I never said anything about reading. But yes, I have read books. They exist in camps too, you know.” He walked around from behind a shelf, hand now in his coat jacket and taking in the musty room with eyes indifferent to the nuanced details of 16th century Gothic architecture. Fucking plebian.

Said pleb pulled up a chair and sat on it backwards, his surprisingly beefy arms crossed over the back of the chair. “This is the smallest library I’ve ever been in.”

 _Small library my ass. This place is twice as big as my apartment._ Janine pulled out a chair in front of Zhalia and asked her, “Do you understand what those numbers mean?”

Retorted the brat, “Would I be reading this if I wasn’t?”

Janine felt heat rise to her cheeks as Jorene slapped a hand over his mouth, stifling a cackle. “Ooh, she got you there.”

Because getting mad at a kid will get her nowhere, Janine fixed a draconic glare at him instead. “See, this is why high command left you here. I bet you just stood by the water cooler leering at the librarian instead of doing your job.”

“If this,” he gestured to his face, “Is too much of a problem for you then by all means, secure the perimeter again. You’ll see nothing but books and teenagers making out in the darker aisles.”

Janine abruptly stood walked away fuming, counting prime numbers to calm herself. Jorene chuckled and shook his head as he stared at Janine’s retreating form.

As soon as she was out of sight he turned his gaze to his new job, still quietly reading an Algebra book, uncaring of the spat between her bodyguards. _So, this is Zhalia Moon._

When Sgt. Jorene Choi was called in for his new mission, he didn’t expect it to be babysitting some higher-up’s kid. After escaping a military facility, slipping from the wrath of the South Korean army, and discovering his magic powers, Jorene expected something a bit more his pay grade.

She wasn’t some prime minister’s daughter, or secret royalty, or some fucked up hidden weapon child-monster thing. She was just some kid who got lucky enough to be adopted by some guy with a lot of powerful connections. Nobody’s out to get her assassinated _yet_.

Although he can guess why _he_ in particular was assigned to her. Zhalia had natural double eyelids and pale features a shade healthier than her adoptive father’s rather anemic skin tone. Even if her surname wasn’t Korean-sounding, she looked Asian enough to claim she was from there, a perfect spy for the mostly Eurocentric Organization.

Unlike the young trainees who were legacies from Seeker families (like his hot-tempered partner), or on-the-run ex-soldiers who happen to have magic (such as himself), Organization sleeper spies needed to have a complete and established life without any ties to their employer.

Jorene can already see it – a good seven-to-ten years in boarding school, a list of extra-curriculars a mile wide that either pertains to her major (probably in the STEM strand, if not something history-related), summers spent doing something that will get her into headlines of some local newspapers. Martial arts training, one for show and another for taking care of business. But that would be for when she’s older.

The younger years are for strengthening the mind. That had mostly been taken care of due to Zhalia being homeschooled by a scientist. Her dossier said that she’s fluent in Dutch, German, and English, and is currently learning Russian, French, and Mandarin– a perfectly normal resume for trust fund Eurasian kids with overindulgent and secretive old money parents.

 _All that shit_ , at eight goddamn years old. The fact that the kid hasn’t lost her mind yet must be proof that the good doctor removed it and replaced it with something less organic in nature. _Rest in peace to your childhood, kid_.

He almost jumped when Zhalia spoke up. “She hates you, you know.”

 _Who? Oh, Janine._ He shrugged in reply. It’s not like he doesn’t know he’s poking a sleeping dragon. Janine clearly had issues a mile wide, but she’s still his senior. The soldier in him wouldn’t never disobey her orders no matter how much of a bluff he puts up. “That means I’m just doing my job right. Do you really like reading?” he asked.

“No.” Zhalia answered, blunter than a butter knife. “I don’t like words. This book doesn’t have a lot of them, though.”

“Your dad didn’t give you these to read?”

“No.”

Confusion and curiosity battled within him as he looked at what she was sketching. A bunch of pineapples, in multiple sizes, in different angles. Perfectly scaled, according to Jorene’s eye. Several neat outlines of the Notre Dame, the Taj Mahal. “Did you trace this?”

“No.” She slid out a piece of paper from the page of the book. Despite the crookedness of the nose and the uneven shadows on his face, it was clearly a sketch of Jorene mid-smirk.

Leonardo da Vinci is shaking. “Wow, how did you-“ He was cut off by the book that Zhalia lid across the table to him.

Geometry? Okay. Last time he checked those books were for basic shapes and shit, not drawing profiles like some expert criminal sketcher, but okay. “Well, I like books too.”

“You said that already.”

“Yes, but wait.” Jorene rummaged through his coat pocket before pulling out a worn, leather pocket Bible and flipped the pages open. “This book saved my life while I was in prison,” he said.

Finding the page he was looking for, he placed slid it across to him. The kid did a double take, adorably so.

A few shelves away, Janine spied Jorene pointing at Bible verses to an entranced Zhalia, whose attention he seemed to have fully taken if the math books unopened on the table were any indication. It was too bad she couldn’t hear whatever crockpot he had to say to the kid, so far away.

Janine momentarily paused from where she was photocopying test papers. She could vaguely recall Captain Matthew saying that she came from a Catholic orphanage before the Doctor found her. _Maybe the kid misses that._

“And this one,” Jorene continued, gesturing to the tiny switchblade resting in the carved space of the Bible, “was my first blade. I swallowed it before they imprisoned me, so they didn’t look for it. Had to throw up to use it though.” He involuntarily shivered at the memory. “Good thing I knew a girl who used to work in a circus, before. Swallowed swords like you wouldn’t believe.”

“And that?” Zhalia pointed to a small amulet resting in the book’s hollow. As her finger touched the amulet’s surface, a soft red glow emanated from its surface, drenching her small hand in shades of purple and red. Jorene grinned.

“ _That_ is Strix. They’re bonded with you now, so congratulations.” He took the amulet out of the Bible and handed it to Zhalia, who stared at it with the same focus she held for the book she was reading earlier. So cute.

Zhalia traced the designs with her little thumb. Jorene felt the flimsy Titan bond shrinking by the second. “Are you sure you don’t need this?” Zhalia asked, voice a tad too quiet for his liking.

 _Maybe her father didn’t allow her other amulets?_ Jorene had a feeling that this would get him in trouble, but he strongly felt that kids shouldn’t be cooped up reading books all day. And if that means letting go of a few of his Titans…

“Nope,” Jorene said, taking the amulet and clasping it around her necklace. It tinkled happily with the green one she had. “There are three of them in there too, so… that’s a birthday, Christmas, and New Year’s gift all in one.”

“Cheapskate,” Janine drawled, emerging from behind the unnecessarily ornate _Applied Mathematics_ shelf, a stack of papers in hand. Zhalia hurriedly closed Jorene’s bible shut, and slid it to him.

“Here you go, kid,” she put the papers on top of Zhalia’s math book and– _oh sweet baby Jesus how many square roots are there_? _Matrices? Probability mechanics? Fucking architecture shit nobody cares about?_

Zhalia looked at the tests, then to Janine, then to Jorene and his Bible. Jorene schooled his face into a neutral expression, and quietly resolved himself to his mission, and to not to leave this kid’s side before this actual kid-hating demon does.

Janine held out a pencil. “Practice. Go wild.”


End file.
